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Ok, now that refrigerates are ozone safe can we get all the regulations removed from them? At least for the safe ones? Right now if you don't reclaim the R-13

Ok, now that refrigerates are ozone safe can we get all the regulations removed from them? At least for the safe ones? Right now if you don't reclaim the R-134A from your car AC or fridge it is a $27k fine while you can buy cans of it to blow out your keyboard. Same goes for propane. This makes the new fridges that use propane almost impossible to work on since nobody has the reclamation equipment for R290.

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ams6110 8y ago
Anecdotally, the techs that I've seen servicing AC are pretty casual about venting excess pressure or purging lines into the air.
- black6 8y ago
  When I was a brewer, we retrofitted our chiller from R22 to R410A (had to change compressor oil to POE, but was otherwise a seamless transition). The techs from the shop we contracted to do the changeover let all that R22 bleed off into the atmosphere because they forgot their reclamation cylinder.
tolien 8y ago
R-134A has a global warming potential of 1550 over 100 years [1], i.e. about 45 times more effective than methane, so while it's not eating the ozone layer you probably shouldn't be spraying it around by the tonne either. Edit: and CO2 has a GWP of 1 (as the reference point for GWP), so R-134A is way more effective than that. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Value...
- mindslight 8y ago
  Judging by the duster cans I have here [0] it looks like they've switched to HFC-152a which has GWP but does not deplete the ozone layer. But the point is that they're the same exact substances, given different designators depending on the use. HFC-134a is perfectly legal to vent into the atmosphere, yet if it's in a refrigeration system (and thus called R-134a) it is not. R-290 is just the refrigeration name for plain propane. I don't know the GWP etc of propane, or the relative amount that would be contributed by deliberate venting of refrigeration systems. But I do know that a $27k fine for doing so is nonsensical - given gas grills, blow torches, and industrial/distribution gas leaks. [0] I didn't buy them. I personally have never had a problem using an air compressor (the traditional worry is condensation droplets), but if you're paranoid go get something like the Metro DataVac.
  - tolien 8y ago
    > HFC-134a is perfectly legal to vent into the atmosphere The argument, I guess, is “it shouldn’t be”, but it’s better than R-12 (for the ozone layer anyway; R-12 has a GWP of 2400) so turning a blind eye to relatively small-scale use is better for the ozone layer. Propane’s GWP is 3.3, so it’s a bit worse than CO_2 but much better than -134a or methane. A fine does seem odd for venting it although as long as it’s cheap there’s probably not much other incentive to try to conserve it. Taxes which made the gas valuable enough to be worth capturing (charge for the externality and all that) seem more sensible but are politically unlikely and I’d be wary of unintended consequences like accidentally incentivising ozone-depleting gases instead.
    - mindslight 8y ago
      The laws were made in the context of ozone depletion, rather than global warming. In that context 134a is inert, which is why it was then purposely sold in spray duster cans - while venting 134a from a refrigeration system remained illegal for no good reason. The modern analog with respect to GWP is propane ("R-290"). With a GWP of 3.3, it looks like venting raw propane is basically equivalent to the CO2 created by burning that same propane. In isolation, putting more propane into the atmosphere is worse than not. But on the whole, we'd much rather see propane used for refrigeration than R-152a or whatever other new proprietary (hydrofluoric acid combustion product !) refrigerant system Dow (et al) come up with. And not requiring the purchase of expensive "reclamation equipment" for propane-used-as-refrigerant would go a long way to encouraging that.
- mohaine 8y ago
  In a perfect world, requiring reclamation would help. In the real world it just pushes this off to gray market recycler. They will come by and pick up your broken fridge for free for the recycle value but most will just vent the refrigerant no mater what. They just claim it was zero pressure when they found it. Hooking up a reclamation machine and paying for the refrigerant disposal would take all the profit out of this service. So the fine mostly just stops the fridge from being worked on by qualified professionals. Perfectly fixable items are going in the trash because nobody wants to buy dedicated equipment for every refrigerant used. R134A is common enough to make the equipment worthwhile to own but not so much for propane and other less common refrigerants.
  - tolien 8y ago
    Agreed down thread that after the fact enforcement action doesn’t seem like a sensible way to do this but political reality is what it is and I expect most of these regulations were intended to encourage people to use non-ozone depleting refrigerants with their global warming potential a problem for another day. > Hooking up a reclamation machine and paying for the refrigerant disposal would take all the profit out of this service. Fixing this (Make it cheaper to reclaim? Make the refrigerant more valuable? Some combination of the two?) seems like the way to go rather than just removing all the regulations and hoping for the best.
  - yock 8y ago
    > Perfectly fixable items are going in the trash Which results in the refrigerant being released anyway once the item deteriorates enough.
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ams6110 8y ago

Anecdotally, the techs that I've seen servicing AC are pretty casual about venting excess pressure or purging lines into the air.

black6 8y ago
When I was a brewer, we retrofitted our chiller from R22 to R410A (had to change compressor oil to POE, but was otherwise a seamless transition). The techs from the shop we contracted to do the changeover let all that R22 bleed off into the atmosphere because they forgot their reclamation cylinder.

tolien 8y ago

R-134A has a global warming potential of 1550 over 100 years [1], i.e. about 45 times more effective than methane, so while it's not eating the ozone layer you probably shouldn't be spraying it around by the tonne either. Edit: and CO2 has a GWP of 1 (as the reference point for GWP), so R-134A is way more effective than that. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Value...

mindslight 8y ago
Judging by the duster cans I have here [0] it looks like they've switched to HFC-152a which has GWP but does not deplete the ozone layer. But the point is that they're the same exact substances, given different designators depending on the use. HFC-134a is perfectly legal to vent into the atmosphere, yet if it's in a refrigeration system (and thus called R-134a) it is not. R-290 is just the refrigeration name for plain propane. I don't know the GWP etc of propane, or the relative amount that would be contributed by deliberate venting of refrigeration systems. But I do know that a $27k fine for doing so is nonsensical - given gas grills, blow torches, and industrial/distribution gas leaks. [0] I didn't buy them. I personally have never had a problem using an air compressor (the traditional worry is condensation droplets), but if you're paranoid go get something like the Metro DataVac.
- tolien 8y ago
  > HFC-134a is perfectly legal to vent into the atmosphere The argument, I guess, is “it shouldn’t be”, but it’s better than R-12 (for the ozone layer anyway; R-12 has a GWP of 2400) so turning a blind eye to relatively small-scale use is better for the ozone layer. Propane’s GWP is 3.3, so it’s a bit worse than CO_2 but much better than -134a or methane. A fine does seem odd for venting it although as long as it’s cheap there’s probably not much other incentive to try to conserve it. Taxes which made the gas valuable enough to be worth capturing (charge for the externality and all that) seem more sensible but are politically unlikely and I’d be wary of unintended consequences like accidentally incentivising ozone-depleting gases instead.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    The laws were made in the context of ozone depletion, rather than global warming. In that context 134a is inert, which is why it was then purposely sold in spray duster cans - while venting 134a from a refrigeration system remained illegal for no good reason. The modern analog with respect to GWP is propane ("R-290"). With a GWP of 3.3, it looks like venting raw propane is basically equivalent to the CO2 created by burning that same propane. In isolation, putting more propane into the atmosphere is worse than not. But on the whole, we'd much rather see propane used for refrigeration than R-152a or whatever other new proprietary (hydrofluoric acid combustion product !) refrigerant system Dow (et al) come up with. And not requiring the purchase of expensive "reclamation equipment" for propane-used-as-refrigerant would go a long way to encouraging that.
mohaine 8y ago
In a perfect world, requiring reclamation would help. In the real world it just pushes this off to gray market recycler. They will come by and pick up your broken fridge for free for the recycle value but most will just vent the refrigerant no mater what. They just claim it was zero pressure when they found it. Hooking up a reclamation machine and paying for the refrigerant disposal would take all the profit out of this service. So the fine mostly just stops the fridge from being worked on by qualified professionals. Perfectly fixable items are going in the trash because nobody wants to buy dedicated equipment for every refrigerant used. R134A is common enough to make the equipment worthwhile to own but not so much for propane and other less common refrigerants.
- tolien 8y ago
  Agreed down thread that after the fact enforcement action doesn’t seem like a sensible way to do this but political reality is what it is and I expect most of these regulations were intended to encourage people to use non-ozone depleting refrigerants with their global warming potential a problem for another day. > Hooking up a reclamation machine and paying for the refrigerant disposal would take all the profit out of this service. Fixing this (Make it cheaper to reclaim? Make the refrigerant more valuable? Some combination of the two?) seems like the way to go rather than just removing all the regulations and hoping for the best.
- yock 8y ago
  > Perfectly fixable items are going in the trash Which results in the refrigerant being released anyway once the item deteriorates enough.

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